On passing the entrance to the corridor on the bedroom floor, she stopped and listened.  No sound of snoring, no shuffling of infirm footsteps was to be heard on the other side of the screen.  She looked round it distrustfully.  The stone passage was a solitude, and the truckle-bed was empty.  Her own eyes had shown her old Mazey on his way to the upper regions, more than an hour since, with a candle in his hand.  Had he taken advantage of his master’s absence to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of sleeping in a room?  As the thought occurred to her, a sound from the further end of the corridor just caught her ear.  She softly advanced toward it, and heard through the door of the last and remotest of the spare bed-chambers the veteran’s lusty snoring in the room inside.  The discovery was startling, in more senses than one.  It deepened the impenetrable mystery of the truckle-bed; for it showed plainly that old Mazey had no barbarous preference of his own for passing his nights in the corridor; he occupied that strange and comfortless sleeping-place purely and entirely on his master’s account.

It was no time for dwelling on the reflections which this conclusion might suggest.  Magdalen retraced her steps along the passage, and descended to the first floor.  Passing the doors nearest to her, she tried the library first.  On the staircase and in the corridors she had felt her heart throbbing fast with an unutterable fear; but a sense of security returned to her when she found herself within the four walls of the room, and when she had closed the door on the ghostly quiet outside.

The first lock she tried was the lock of the table-drawer.  None of the keys fitted it.  Her next experiment was made on the cabinet.  Would the second attempt fail, like the first?

No!  One of the keys fitted; one of the keys, with a little patient management, turned the lock.  She looked in eagerly.  There were open shelves above, and one long drawer under them.  The shelves were devoted to specimens of curious minerals, neatly labeled and arranged.  The drawer was divided into compartments.  Two of the compartments contained papers.  In the first, she discovered nothing but a collection of receipted bills.  In the second, she found a heap of business documents; but the writing, yellow with age, was enough of itself to warn her that the Trust was not there.  She shut the doors of the cabinet, and, after locking them again with some little difficulty, proceeded to try the keys in the bookcase cupboards next, before she continued her investigations in the other rooms.

The bookcase cupboards were unassailable, the drawers and cupboards in all the other rooms were unassailable.  One after another she tried them patiently in regular succession.  It was useless.  The chance which the cabinet in the library had offered in her favor was the first chance and the last.